Nabila Nisha

Exploring the Dimensions of Mobile Banking Service Quality: Implications for the Banking Sector

Today, mobile phone is an essential part of the lives of most people – a reason why, banking sector and mobile phone service providers have teamed up to provide banking services to customers via mobile phones. However, customers often are critical of the quality of such alternative financial delivery services provided by banks. The aim of this paper is to examine the underlying factors and service qualities that can influence customers’ behavioral intentions towards the use of mobile banking services in Bangladesh. The hybrid model in this study identifies service qualities like reliability, privacy, information quality, responsiveness and empathy that capture customers’ overall perceptions of the performance of mobile banking services. In addition, other factors like performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions significantly influence customers’ intention to use such services. Implications of these findings provide practical recommendations to banking industry, and directions for further work from the perspective of Bangladesh. KEywoRDS Bangladesh, Banks, E-S-QUAL, Mobile Banking, Service Quality, UTAUT

Understanding Operations of Floating Schools: A Case of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change since it is a delta formed by the confluence of major rivers. Making sure that schools are resilient against such natural disasters in Bangladesh should be a priority for any disaster risk reduction preparedness and planning. To address this challenge, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) found an innovative way to deliver information and primary education to residents of wetland area in Bangladesh. It operates 111-vessel fleet of floating schools, libraries, health clinics and training centres, equipped with wireless Internet access, serving over 1,00,000 families. This case captures a clear picture of this rapidly growing non-governmental organization (NGO) of Shidhulai and its extensive activities leading to the transformation of the region’s waterways into pathways for education, information and technology in Bangladesh. Although the case partly focuses upon the role of NGOs and the operational concept of floating schools across the world, an examination of SSS’s growth, challenges, current and plans ahead strategies is the main emphasis here. All these discussions ultimately pave a clear way as to which steps the NGO could take to strengthen its position, and support the development of socio-economic infrastructure of Bangladesh.

An Empirical Study of the Balanced Scorecard Model: Evidence from Bangladesh

Today, the effective use of the Balance Scorecard BSC model can bring in a holistic approach to performance measurement and break the traditional use of financial indicators alone to measure the performance of any service-sector organization. As such, the aim of this paper is to examine the underlying hypotheses of the BSC model and how they can be used for performance evaluation by focusing on the banking sector of Bangladesh. Results indicate a positive correlation among the BSC perspectives at a statistically significant level and in a sequential way for the selected banks. Findings of the study particularly highlights that banks which have experienced improvements in their selected financial indicators like ROA, ROE, etc had evidently increased their efforts towards the characteristics under the learning and growth, internal business process and customer perspectives. These findings thus clearly have a number of important implications for bank managers in the context of Bangladesh.

Impact of tourism on CO2 emission: evidence from Pakistan

ABSTRACT This study investigates the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission–tourist arrival–growth in Pakistan by taking time series data from the period of 1972 to 2013. The study applied three approaches of co-integration (autoregressive distributed lag bounds test, Johansen and Juselius and Gregory and Hansen structural break test) to confirm the valid long-run positive interaction between CO2 emission and tourist arrivals. The robustness of cointegrating vectors is further checked using fully modified ordinary least square and dynamic ordinary least square tests and results validate the long-run coefficients. The results of variance decomposition method exhibit the uni-directional causality between CO2 emission and tourist arrivals running from tourist arrival to CO2 emission. It was therefore noted that policies which moderate the influence of tourism development to emission are necessary for reducing the harmful effect of tourist activities and also to increase the impact of tourism upon the economic growth. The study may guide policy-makers in formulating categorical energy and tourism development policies for sustainable growth for long periods.

The Role of Religion on Purchase Behavior of Muslim Consumers: The Context of Bangladesh

Abstract Purpose This study aims to explore the presumed relationship between religion and purchase behavior of consumers in the context of Bangladesh. Methodology/approach This research is divided into two main parts. In the first one, the authors reviewed some of the most important studies relative to religion and marketing and those specifically relative to Islamic marketing. In the second part, this research shows the findings of a structured questionnaire administered to a sample of Muslim consumers currently residing in the capital city of Bangladesh – Dhaka. The questionnaire also sought to find out the respondents’ attitude towards the modern marketing tactics, in terms of the physical and visual appearance of local products, their perception of religious principles in the purchase decision and their attitude towards imported products of non-Muslim countries. Findings Results of this study highlight that religion often represents an essential reference point in influencing the perception and purchase behavior of consumers in the context of Bangladesh. This implies that marketing strategies based on Islamic ethics is going to be quite instrumental in order to reach out to the consumers in Muslim countries. As such, there is largely a strong positive relationship between religion and the purchase behavior of Muslim consumers. Research limitations/implications The lack of research on Islamic marketing limits the intensity of arguments in this study. For this reason, the literature review is not completely exhaustive. A small sample size has also been used due to time and resource constraints. Future research can be done on a bigger sample size of Bangladesh or other Islamic countries across the world. Other research avenues may include the study of Islamic marketing mix and exploring the factors that can influence non-Muslim consumers to select products and services based on Islamic ethics. Practical implications It is very important for businesses to introduce healthy practices in countries like Bangladesh and this can be rightly achieved through the use of Islamic marketing. Furthermore, the use of Islamic ethics in marketing strategies can eventually influence the religious perception of consumers and make them loyal towards any brands, products, and services in the context of Bangladesh. Originality/value The chapter draws attention to Bangladesh as one of the potential markets where the concept of Islamic market mechanism can be established. It also highlights the challenges that global marketers can face with Islamic marketing in Muslim countries like Bangladesh. Besides, it is the only study to date that focuses upon the relationship of religion, marketing, and consumer behavior for consumer products of the manufacturing industry.

Macroeconomic Determinants of the Behavior of Dhaka Stock Exchange DSE

Many past studies documented a strong evidence of a linkage between stock prices and macroeconomic activities across different stock markets and time horizons. However, most of these studies have focused on developed economies and highlighted the impact of either domestic variables or a few global factors. In recent times, the impact of global macroeconomic factors upon stock returns has garnered a lot of interest due to globalization. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine the combined influence of global and domestic macroeconomic factors upon stock returns and extend this relationship to an emerging market of Bangladesh. Using Vector Autoregression VAR model, findings indicate a considerable impact of money supply for the stock returns of Dhaka Stock Exchange DSE. Additionally, an insignificant influence of the world price index is observed, which implies a complete segmentation of DSE from the global financial markets. Finally, the study highlights regulatory changes and policy-making decisions from the perspective of Bangladesh.

Stock Market and Macroeconomic Behavior: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)

An impressive body of research has documented that movement in stock prices are highly sensitive to changes in the macroeconomic variables of an economy. Past empirical studies have examined this relationship across different stock markets by either outlining the influence of only domestic factors or a few global variables. A recent phenomenon has been the shift of academic interest to the emerging economies to investigate this presumed linkage by focusing more on global factors due to the trend of globalization. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine the influence of only global macroeconomic factors upon stock returns in the emerging stock market of Pakistan. By employing Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), findings indicate that significant influence of the global macroeconomic factors of the international interest rates and the world price index is observed, which implies a gradual integration of KSE towards the global financial markets. Limitations and implications for practice and research are also discussed.

Beyond the Border: Yellow Goes International

This article reports a case study on the Bangladeshi leading fashion brand Yellow. The study investigated Yellow’s international marketing process, following the brand’s journey from Bangladesh to Pakistan and South Korea. Conducting desk research and interviewing corporate personnel from Yellow, this case study obtained in-depth information and broader understanding about the internationalization of Yellow. The article investigated Yellow’s reasons for going international, how it chose its international markets and market segments and the challenges Yellow faced on its journey. The article is divided two parts: the first part discusses Yellow’s local expansion and the second part discusses Yellow’s internationalization.